“No; I am going to the Cathedral.”
We had just passed the Cathedral, when he had made no motion to enter; but now I tried in vain to dissuade him from it. I told him that there was no service at this hour; that we might as well not have left home as to go inside of any house. All to no purpose; he was just as determined as at first, until finally he turned fiercely upon me and said, with a strange emphasis in his tone,—
“I will go; I must go; I feel something within me that compels me to go!”
Was this again the vibration of that terrible chord in his nature—that terrible chord that threatened to destroy forever the harmony of his life?
Powerless to turn him from his intent, together we crossed the northern portal and entered the nave. It was so dim that the heavy shadows clustered in a rayless cloud among the arches, and at the end, far off—they looked like stars in the gloom—flickered a few tapers at the altar, while higher up swung the sacred but sickly flame that had been burning for centuries. There was not a stir, not a sound. I trembled all over with a singular sensation of weakness that came upon me as I followed Reinhart, who went steadily down the long aisle to where the transepts met, then stopped as abruptly as he had stopped a few moments before in the street.
It was, as I have said, just where the transepts met. There, upon a low platform or dais, stood a bier covered by a velvet pall, whose heavy border fell in waveless folds. And upon it rested a casket with silver mountings. Beside it two tapers burned, one at the head and one at the foot; and two monks kneeled, motionless. Beyond the choir I saw the gleam of the organ-pipes, wavering, come and go. The altar lights circled about each other, and they, too, receded in infinite space; they grew dim; they vanished; they sprang again; they fled again. The great tombs loomed out and faded; the figure on an ebon crucifix, inspired with life, writhed in fearful agony, then once more became transfixed, and the weak, trembling sensation under which I had been laboring was gone.
I saw that we were standing by the dead of some noble family, for the repose of whose soul the monks were offering up their prayers. I drew a little nearer. Upon the snow-like cushions within the casket a young girl lay sleeping the last deep and solemn sleep. Or was it a vision?—one of that mystical land, whose white portals are beyond the sun; that land where there is no shadow, no stain; where there is beauty celestial, peace everlasting? No, it was all the future we ever see; it was still this side the gates of eternity; it was death.
A chaplet of flowers crowned her brow, all colorless as marble, and garlands of flowers wreathed her robe, that was purer than fleece; but her hands held no lilies, no jasmine; more sacred than these, they held a small golden crucifix, an emblem imperishable, holy. The burning tapers threw not over the face, turned slightly toward the altar, that beautiful dream-light; it was the last inscription written by the spirit, even after it had seen down the radiant vista of immortal happiness.
Ah! why offer prayers for a soul beyond the troubled sea, beyond the dread valley? O, frail humanity! Even then beside the pall, where rested the solemn silence no voice could break, stood one for whom the kneeling monks might have told a thousand aves.
Reinhart raised his face suddenly. Straightening himself, he extended his arm with a wild gesture, uttering a laugh that grated clear up to the dome.